Fluor Corp., a company based in Irving, Texas, that employs contractors in Afghanistan, confirmed on Sunday that some of its employees, including the two British nationals, were killed in the attack. Their names were not being released out of respect for their families, said Keith Stephens, a company representative.

The bombing was the single deadliest assault on Americans in the capital since the war began, military officials said, and follows brazen Taliban attacks on the American Embassy and NATO headquarters in the city last month.

A Western defense official said at least four of the dead Americans were G.I.’s and the rest were contract workers; a Canadian soldier and four Afghans were also reported to be killed.

The attack Saturday and the other high-profile assaults are seen as a shift in Taliban strategy as the militants struggle against a surge in American troops that has loosened their grip on the Taliban heartland in the south and compromised their ability to stage more conventional attacks on NATO forces.

American officials see the latest assaults as the Taliban’s attempt to shake confidence in the Afghan government, which has been taking over security from NATO in Kabul and other areas of the country

for negligence after stepping on a landmine resulting in an immediate below the knee amputation in an area previously cleared by and certified clear of landmines by Ronco Consulting.

The United Nations board of inquiry found that Ronco failed to find the mine that injured Mr Fartham as well as three other mines.

The complaint states that Ronco Consulting, acting through it’s agents and/or employee’s, breached it’s professional duty of care to Fantham and did not exercise the reasonable care and skill expected of professional mine clearance companies.